UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Never mind Alcatraz, the seals at Pier 39 or the trolly cars, it’s not a tourist trip to San Francisco this week for a recent Penn State graduate.
Nope, Greg Finberg has competition hard work on his mind.
Finberg, who earned his bachelor’s degree in journalism in May, is one of 29 students from 17 universities across the nation competing this week in the individual national championships of the William Randolph Hearst Foundation’s Journalism Awards Program. There are eight writing finalists, five each in audio, photo, television and multimedia, and one podcast finalist.
Students on site in San Francisco are challenged to write stories on location, after earning their spots in the competition as the result of 14 monthly competitions covering a variety of topics earlier in the year. The finalists qualified after 1,353 entries were received in those competitions.
Finberg qualified because of a sports feature story, “Time Out,” that examined the struggle to find and hire scholastic sports officials in central Pennsylvania. Finberg, an editor for SB Nation, completed an internship with the Philadelphia Inquirer and served as a writer and later sports editor for the Daily Collegian during his time at Penn State.
Nearly two dozen Penn State students have qualified for the individual national championships in the past two decades. Three Penn Staters have earned the individual national championship during that time — Melissa Manno (2021), Anna Orso (2014), Andrew McGill (2010), and Halle Stockton (2007).
This year’s competition in San Francisco runs through June 5, with winners announced that evening.